MIDDLE EAST - March 15th, 2019
While the fascist attacks continue of Trump, Putin, Al Assad, Zionism,
the Saudi monarchy and the counterrevolutionary Iranian Ayatollah…
Once again, Middle East in flames
After huge struggles and cruel defeats of the revolutionary processes in Egypt, Libya, Yemen, Syria in 2011-2012; and when the embers of the revolution are still burning while there’s fierce resistance against the counterrevolutionary offensives of imperialism and its lackey governments
√ The workers and the people poor of Sudan, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon are breaking into the scene, seeking for bread and against the pro-imperialist regimes…
√ The masses in Gaza are challenging the infamous pact between Abbas and the Zionist occupation
√ In Idlib and Daraa the flames of the Syrian revolution are kept alive
√ Once again the masses are taking to the streets of Tunisia
The battle of Algeria has begun
There’s fighting in Algiers, Gaza, Daraa and in the streets of Paris
Once again, a new wave of uprisings for bread by the exploited shakes the Middle East. The exploited have risen by marching every day in Sudan, Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq, Tunisia, Iran, Algeria... They denounce the governments of being “corrupt” for giving away all the enormous oil wealth of those countries, leaving to the masses in misery.
We are facing a new uprising in the Middle East, where hunger is once again the engine. They are resuming the 2011 uprisings, when a huge chain of revolutions shook the whole region, facing an increase of 200-400% in the price of bread.
The deceptions of the reformist left are exposed. In 2011 they affirmed that we were facing “Arab springs” and “democratic revolutions”. Thus they made all the workers of the world believe that it was about “barbarous people” that only wanted “democracy”. They hid the true character of these uprisings, and continue to do so today, speaking about marches against dictatorships without mentioning the fight against the high cost of living and the unheard-of miseries.
Thus, these currents called for supporting “democratic solutions”, such as constituent assemblies in Tunisia or Egypt, or a “democratic” or “opposition” sector of the local bourgeoisie, though without expropriating the transnationals that plunder the region, expelling imperialism, ending national oppression, or disarming the army and arming the masses; and also without calling to coordinate a common struggle with the workers of the imperialist countries.
Today reality speaks for itself. All the “democratic solutions” have been nothing more than a diversion to return to fascism and the worst of the bloody dictatorships against the masses. The “democratic revolutions” of the reformist left have nothing to the masses, except deepening hunger, misery and massacre. Therefore, to conquer the bread, the exploited of this region are rising again today.
The most tragic symbol of this is Tunisia. In 2011, a young computer technician, Mohamed Bouazizi, immolated himself because of the lack of bread, work and the prospect of a decent life, since they did not even let him sell vegetables. That was a spark that ignited the fire throughout the Middle East. Today, 8 years later, in the same Tunisia, another young man, Abderezok Zorqi, just after calling for getting up and starting a revolution, has immolated himself because of the terrible conditions the exploited have to endure in that country.
Before this new uprising in the Middle East, when 8 years since the beginning of the Syrian revolution, the lessons of what happened in 2011 become important, that is, to understand how the bitter defeats of these revolutionary processes could happen; so that this time victory can be reached.
2011: following the 2008 crash and the decomposition of the world capitalist system, a huge revolutionary offensive of the masses shook the Maghreb and the Middle East
A huge betrayal of the world reformist left led to cruel defeats
When 2011 began, a vast chain of revolutions opened in the Middle East. The masses took the streets by thousands and thousands against the increase in the price of food. They immediately confronted their governments and regimes, servants of the imperialist oil companies that plunder that region and starve the masses. The war cry was “The people want the fall of the regime!”
The heads rolled down of Qadafy in Libya, Mubarak in Egypt and Ben Ali in Tunisia. The revolution started in Bahrain, Yemen... In Syria, people was fighting 30 blocks away from al-Assad’s government palace. The main devices of domination of imperialism in the region brokedown, like those autocracies. Zionism lost firepower and the US imperialism could not intervene with its army, as it had been forced to withdraw its troops from Iraq in 2008 because of the enormous resistance and especially the struggle of the American working class against war.
They were great revolutions of the workers and the exploited people, perhaps as the most advanced process of the struggle of the world working class that responded to the crash of 2008 and the attempts of imperialism to unload the crisis on them. There it was announced that the capitalist system was totally rotten and bankrupt, in which 1% of parasites had monopolized 50% of the wealth, leaving the masses in the deepest misery.
The response of imperialism was immediate. It concentrated all its forces to crush the Syrian revolution. Thus, Al Assad’s regime gained support, weapons, allies, license to kill, (all coordinated at the Geneva, Vienna, Astana and Sochi conferences) and carried out a bloody genocide. From those conferences, the US imperialism, Turkey, Russia, the ayatollahs and Hezbollah organized a true counterrevolution.
Along with this, a huge conspiracy surrounded this huge uprising of 2011-2012. The bitter defeats, as it also happened in Egypt, Libya or Yemen, were not due to the strength of imperialism; neither it was for lack of combat spirit or “backwardness” of the masses. It was because of the betrayal and encirclement imposed by the social-imperialist parties of Europe and the world reformist left.
As we saw, in the first place, these parties comprising Stalinists, remnants of the social democracy, these varied renegades of Marxism launched their “democratic revolutions” scam. When the revolution struck in Syria, the vast majority openly supported the counter-revolutionary fascist al-Assad openly, while one sector supported the other bourgeois Syrian variant, i.e. the FSA, which surrendered one by one the rebellious cities and then re-entered the army of Al Assad.
These parties affirmed that no revolutions of the workers and the people were massacred there, but “jihadists”, “ultra religious fanatics”, “terrorists”. The result: entire Syrian cities devastated, working class neighborhoods reduced to rubble, 700,000 massacred, 15 million in refugee camps in the middle of nowhere or in concentration camps in Europe.
That is, a huge conspiracy was what diverted and defeated that revolutionary mass offensive. The conditions for victory were given, with the struggle of the workers of the imperialist countries. In 2008, the Iraqi resistance made the imperialist powers to run away that had invaded their country, because they fought along with the American, English and Spanish masses, who refused to continue dying for the oil companies in the Middle East. The war cry of the Spanish masses was “You make wars and we put the dead”.
But in 2011, the treacherous social-imperialist leaders, with this action, launched a cry of “fight against terrorism” and imposed a state of neutrality on all the workers of the world, so that in the Middle East genocide and massacres could be perpetuated. They tended a siege around the Syrian revolution, which left al-Assad free to slaughter and the FSA bourgeoisie to manipulate and sell out the revolution.
Thus these great revolutionary processes did not reach the seizure of power, and were betrayed and crushed by blood and fire, but without imperialism and its lackeys could set up once again stable devices of domination in the region as they had before. 2011
2018-2019: The trade war of Trump, the EU, the Chinese and Russian big bourgeoisies is a fierce war against the world working class and the oppressed peoples of the world
Once again the exploited of Maghreb and Middle East wage battle
After the massacre in Syria and the advance of the counterrevolution in the Middle East, imperialism saw its victory consummated. The US was given a free hand and came out to maintain its supremacy on the planet, in a dispute for the control of the world market against its imperialist competitors and seeking to kneel the Russian and Chinese bourgeoisies. Thus, a “trade war” was opened, where in the first place the war was declared to the world working class, to take away all their conquests, make them work in maquilas in the worst conditions of slavery and super-exploitation, while plundering all the wealth of the oppressed peoples.
The Middle East is not the exception. Imperialism comes for everything, redoubling the looting and forcing its lackey states in the region to pay for all the costs of wars. Moreover, the price of a barrel of oil is almost half of what it was in 2011, and the imperialist oil companies that plunder the region do not give out a single penny of their share of the revenues. Thus, the revenues of the countries of the Middle East fell, which are single-producers of hydrocarbons countries, and at the same time they import food, and wheat is subsidized. Local governments unleashed this attack against the masses, removed the aforementioned subsidies to wheat, and food prices have increased, the high cost of living skyrocketed, while in several countries the IMF obliges to apply high taxes, cuts in state spending and layoffs, etc.
And the masses responded. In spite of so much massacre, of the chastise that the Syrian genocide meant for all the workers of the planet, of the treachery of all the leaderships of the working class at the international level; in Algeria, Sudan, Iran, the exploited revolt because they know that if they do not, they’ll die of hunger.
In Tunisia they have taken to the streets again due to lack of jobs and decent wages. In Iran, the exploited rose up against the ayatollahs, slaughterers of the Syrian masses, who impose very low wages (and not even pay them) while they are standing on the second reserves of oil and gas in the world of oil and gas. The Algerian masses take to the streets of Algiers, and also of Paris, where there are millions of workers of Algerian origin who do the worst jobs in the imperialist centers and are the heart of the French working class.
In Gaza, the Palestinian people do not surrender and struggle to reclaim their territory against the Zionist occupier. The fence is not stood anymore, and there is no square centimeter left to live in that small strip where more than 1.5 million Palestinians live.
One of the most important facts of this new wave of the exploited in the Middle East happens in Syria. There, despite the genocide by al-Assad, despite the fact that the masses resist in Idlib in their last trench, despite the fact that the FSA has surrendered the rebel cities one by one to the dog Bashar and returned to integrate his army to control those cities, that is, everywhere the counterrevolutionary plan of the Geneva conference was applied under the US command... Daraa has revolted. Thousands and thousands of exploited march through the streets of that city that today is under the fascist boot of al-Assad. There the combat is not only against Bashar but against the counterrevolutionary regime of the Geneva conference, that is, the one of the FSA merged with that of al-Assad.
We are then before an uprising against a starving capitalist system, and against the imperialism that plunders those nations and leaves the masses in misery. It is a phenomenal revolution of the working class and the oppressed, whose first task is to put an end to the imperialist yoke, national oppression and looting; and conquer national independence.
But above all this new revolutionary wave hits directly on the territory of the enemy: with the uprising inside Paris against the French imperialist pirates who also plunder the Middle East; with the uprising of the exploited of Iran against the ayatollahs and their murderous guard, killers of the Syrian masses; with the struggle of the Palestinian people against Zionism and the PLO pact that sustains it, and with the struggle of the workers and the Syrian people in Daraa against the Geneva conference.
With the entry into combat of the Algerian masses, the Maghreb and Middle East revolution enters Europe
The masses of Algeria have taken to the streets. In this very oil rich country, one of the main exporters of OPEC, the masses live in poverty, with 23% that is below the poverty line, while Bouteflika’s gang gives all the wealth to the imperialist transnationals. Now a new trap is being prepared to keep the regime in power, and Total looting the oil, with the masses in misery.
Against this, the exploited took to the streets with huge demonstrations of thousands and thousands, especially in the capital, Algiers... and also in Paris, in France itself. There are millions of Algerian workers in that country. Counting all Maghrebi immigrants and their descendants, it is estimated that 19 million workers do the worst jobs and are the most exploited sector. They are the heart of the French working class.
This revolutionary wave of Maghreb and the Middle East has crossed the Mediterranean and entered the imperialist Europe. Yesterday, in 2015, it was the Syrian refugees who came to the old continent and told the tragedy of the counterrevolution, awakening the enormous class solidarity of the European workers, breaking the siege and the division imposed by the treacherous leaderships. These leaderships, after a couple of self-attacks in France, made the workers believe that the refugees and the Middle East peoples were all terrorists, dividing them again.
Since then, it’s been very bad for the masses of the Maghreb and the Middle East, with Syria massacred and the refugees on the Syrian borders in tents in the middle of nowhere, while those in Europe are in real concentration camps. And very badly it has also been to the European working class, with French imperialism snatching the historic conquest of the 35 hours a week and imposing labor flexibility.
Today, this unit among European and Maghrebi/Middle Eastern exploited is raised again, since the revolutionary combat enters Europe directly, with thousands of Algerians, who are part of the French working class, at times when the Yellow Vests are fighting against the attacks of the Macron government on the working class and the exploited. It has been concentrated in France. Paris has become the capital of the European and Middle Eastern revolution!
It is at order of the day to unify the combats of the workers of the oppressed countries with the working class of the imperialist countries all over the planet
What the second wave of uprisings for bread in the Middle East and fighting in the streets of Paris demonstrates is that, whether in the oppressed or imperialist countries the working class is one and only and is fighting against the same enemy: imperialism and its lackeys.
Not only this is posed for the Middle East and Europe, but throughout the planet, particularly the US. Mexican workers of the maquilas go on strike and enter the fight, as in Matamoros, while a caravan of thousands of migrants go to the US, where there are more than 30 million Chicano workers who are the heart of the working class North American.
That is why Trump is desperate to build a wall against Latin American immigrants, while the Democratic Party, with the support of the entire “New Left”, shows Sanders and a pair of figureheads of Latin origin as the allies of the struggle of the semicolonial world. That is, they want to make Latino workers believe that their demands will be conquered by supporting the imperialist butchers of the Democratic Party, responsible for looting and massacring the semicolonial world while to the interior of the US, among other things, they snatched with Obama all the US workers’ conquests and imprisoned thousands of immigrant children.
They want to prevent at all costs the unity of the workers of the oppressed countries and the imperialist centers. But both face the same enemy: imperialism and all its agents. They plunder the Middle East, super-exploit immigrants in the metropolis as cheap labor, sink wages and wrestle the gains to workers in the imperialist countries, and today they want to deepen their plans for labor-flexibilizing and looting.
In Paris there is the possibility of launching the war cry of “The same working class, the same enemy, the same fight against labor flexibilization, against imperialist plunder and for a decent life for all the exploited!”
In France, on the land from which the Islamophobic war cry was launched against the workers and exploited in the Middle East, there is the possibility of breaking the siege imposed by the reformist left at the international level on the revolutions of that region and ending the division among the workers of the oppressed peoples and the imperialist countries.
Yesterday the masses of Idlib marched along the streets shouting “Open the fronts” and “May the brigades unite to defeat al-Assad and his allies.” The fronts were opened: in Sudan, Tunisia, Jordan, Lebanon, Algeria and the streets of Paris. It is time for the “brigades to unite”, that is, for all the revolutionary combats to unify and coordinate on both sides of the Mediterranean Sea!
Today, the masses of Daraa, the city where the Syrian revolution began in 2011, are coming out to fight again. That city was sold out by the FSA generals, who later transformed themselves into al-Assad’s mercenary forces.
The spark of the living resistance of the masses of Idlib, which today is being massacred by the bombs of Putin and the dog Bashar, continues and will continue to set the martyred Syria on fire.
On this 8th anniversary we affirm that the Syrian revolution has not surrendered.
Long live the revolution!
We must get rid of the treacherous leaderships that systematically prevent the fights from uniting, as the Mexican workers of Matamoros got rid of their leaderships. The first blow for this was already given by the Yellow Vests, organizing outside the union bureaucracies and the left parties, taking to the streets a revolutionary struggle despite and against them. Now, the Algerian masses have hit, doing what these leaderships always wanted to avoid, i.e. bringing the Maghreb and Middle East revolution to the streets of Paris.
Let’s unify the struggle in Paris, the capital of the European and the Middle East revolution! The same revolutionary combat of the Maghreb and the Middle East with the Yellow Vests, on both sides of the Mediterranean Sea!
For the Socialist United States of the Maghreb and the Middle East!
We must expropriate without payment the imperialist oil companies that plunder the Middle East!
Out with Exxon, BP, Total, ENI, Chevron, Shell...!
They arm invasions and fascist regimes that crush and massacre the workers and the oppressed peoples who rise up for bread and freedom.
In the imperialist powers: The enemy is at home!
We have to stop the imperialist war machine!
Every strike against the oppressed peoples of the semicolonial world is also received by the workers of the central countries.
Enough of labor flexibility! Enough of tariffs and increase in the cost of living! Decent work for everyone with a wage at the level of the typical shopping basket!
Equal pay for equal work! Documents for all refugees and immigrants! Open the borders!
Let the governments and regimes of the oppressors fall!
For the working class to live, imperialism and its lackeys must die.
Editorial Board of the
“The Truth of the Oppressed”
